Power Consumption: 5G Basestations Are Hungry, Hungry Hippos
The power consumption of a 5G basestation is three times that of its 4G LTE predecessor, according to Zhengmao Li, EVP at China Mobile, at a presentation at Mobile
“A 5G base station is generally expected to consume roughly three times as much power as a 4G base station. And more 5G base stations are needed to cover the same area,” -IEEE Spectrum, 5G's Waveform Is a Battery Vampire
Simulation results reveal that more than 50% of the energy is consumed by the computation power at 5G small cell BS's. Moreover, the computation power of 5G small cell BS can approach 800 watt when the massive MIMO (e.g., 128 antennas) is deployed to transmit high volume traffic.
This restricts the potential use of the power models, as their validity and accuracy remain unclear. Future work includes the further development of the power consumption models to form a unified evaluation framework that enables the quantification and optimization of energy consumption and energy efficiency of 5G networks.
To achieve gigabit speeds, the plan with 5G is to have it operate at very high frequencies of 24-26 Gigahertz. For this reason, 5G requires millions of new so-called “small cells,” for example, transmitters in lampposts. Billions of new wireless devices will soon be available worldwide. All of the above consumes electricity.
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